The Joy of Photobooks – By Nik Stanbridge

Back in the early 1980s, in my 20s and in my formative photographic years, I read a lot of books about the craft and practice of photography. This obviously contributed enormously to my understanding of photography and my ability to use a manual camera and take well exposed photographs.

I bought and read beautiful old books about the zone system, toning, developer formulae, darkroom printing. And I kept going. Books about the decisive moment, composition, film stock, technique this, technique that… Lots of practical books. But no books of photographs (OK, maybe one or two… an Ansel Adams or two).

During this time, I also went to a lot of exhibitions. As a student in London, I would head off on weekends to the private/commercial/public galleries hosting the best shows and exhibitions. In fact seeing photographs live and in the flesh was hugely important to me and I know it influenced my work (it’s still an activity I absolutely love and seek out as often as I can). One of the memorable ones was David Hurn’s 1984 show Up To Date that included  “Documentary pictures of romantic places. Romantic pictures of documentary places” at the ffoto gallery). In those days, pre-internet, magazines (Camera and Creative Camera especially) and galleries were pretty much the only way to see new work.

It’s also at about this time that I was introduced to some of the more philosophical and theoretical treatise on photography. Books like Camera Lucida, Ways of Seeing, On Photography… these were all great reads and influenced me and how I thought about photography.

Eventually it dawned on me that looking at more photographs, and understanding what photographers were trying to say, was what would most benefit the development of my work and projects. That and studying the photographers whose work I admired and wanted to learn from. And discovering work new to me to broaden my horizons: despite recognising the work of a lot of photographers, I realised that I was coming at it from a very limited, mainstream perspective (popular photography if you like). When I recognised this, that there was a whole world of ‘less mainstream’ photography that I wasn’t aware of, I was off!

Here are some of my favourite books.

Seeing and studying the work of other photographers became a thing for me. I think it started when I went to the Radical Eye show at Tate Modern and bought the catalogue (I could now afford this sort of thing) and then somehow through that, I arrived at the Parr & Badger volumes on photobooks. I realise that I was quite late to the party re. buying photobooks but having acquired a few (OK, a lot), the benefits of studying actual photographs/photographers and the stories they tell started to make sense and really hit home with me.

Admittedly I bought a few duds along the way but I think that’s no different to going to an exhibition and realising that you didn’t enjoy it (but sometimes a bit more expensive).

I now have quite a library and they are (mostly) a constant source of joy and inspiration. They are a resource I cherish and refer to regularly. And my work is infinitely better for it in terms of the variety of the projects I’m working on and my ability to express myself and communicate through my work. I also think my style has evolved in terms of how I present my images. It certainly influenced my decision to abandon digital and return to film three years ago. And I’m making better photobooks myself – a side effect of looking at all those photobooks was absorbing how they are designed and how images to sequence and edit images to tell a story.

This might make it sound like I spend all my time reading rather than shooting. Far from it. But I do place a lot of value on learning, reflecting, and thinking about the photography that I do. I love it!

I’m on Instagram here, and my website, such as it is, is here.

A shameless plug from the editor: 35mmc has it’s first photobook on Kickstarter. You can read about and back the project here.

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